My iPhone 4 contract is up and being a Windows developer its a natural step to grab one ... assuming its not completely s*** when I sit down in the shop for a go. Will post a mini-review if you like.

Anyone else going home to Nokia? I think its been a decade since I owned a Nokia phone, but I still remember the 'no nokia no care' s*** that used to get around haha. Have heard reasonable things about WP8? I'm not overly concerned about the number of apps on the Store as long as it does the basics well.

Yeh I'm not too concerned about the lack of SD. I have very rarely come close to using all the data on my iPhone's 16Gb.

The lumia does seem kind of fat, I'm also unsure about such a big phone. I want a bigger screen than my iPhone tho. Love the wireless charging and imaging sounds good, and being in the Windows ecosystem for work and my home machine etc I expect it will all play nice.

I reckon I'm done with iOS as well now, it feels really old. Thanks for the 7.5 tip, will check them out in the store. Plan to sit down with an S3 and the Lumia, but given that I want to give Windows Store dev a crack it will probably sway me that way.

Yeah the 900 is amazing, I moved over from HTC Desire HD and really it just works well like the Apple iOS. The UI is simplistic, I love the Live tiles for having information directly shown. It's a solid phone too, doesn't feel light or that it may break at any moment, and you can actually use it as a hammer with the Gorilla Glass. Overall its a great phone, though the Windows phone OS will always be that in-between of Android and iOS, in that it offers both a social ease of access and also more advanced features for those who want it.

Pricing and availability officially announced by Nokia. End of November; Grey 920 on all carriers. All other colour 920s on Telstra. All 820s on Vodafone.
$649 for 820; $829 for 920.

http://www.wpdownunder.com/?p=6726
Harvey Norman were taking preorders for the 920 for $699 yesterday, which they've since been ringing around and telling people they made a mistake and it's $799. GG Harvey Norman.

haha. remember when phones were so old and useless that they could EOL because you couldn't just update the software on them. those were the bad old days.

I am slightly amazed to see nerds get interested in the Windows Phone. I find your reasons utterly bizarre as well. It looks like a great phone on paper so I will be fascinated to see how yall go with them; kudos for continuing to be early adopters of crazy new technology in the face of the overwhelming momentum of Android/iOS!

haha. remember when phones were so old and useless that they could EOL because you couldn't just update the software on them. those were the bad old days.

These days I use a phone for 22 months on contract and then get a shiny new one. The once-$1000 device becomes a child's plaything or maybe eBay'd. EOL is the least of my worries and I'd prefer them to build cool new s*** in a phone than worry about making sure that everything works on the old s***.

Ultimately even if the new OS is able to be patched onto an old phone lots of fetaures will be hardware dependent and you're lucky to get 1-2 upgrades before it runs like s*** anyway.

kudos for continuing to be early adopters of crazy new technology in the face of the overwhelming momentum of Android/iOS!

That's how the overwhelming momentum of those phones started! This is a good thing - the only way to keep the bastards honest is to stop buying their s*** when it becomes stale.

Telstra has the better network and has actual 4G (and I'm on it!) so this is my reaction to your reaction, SIR.

Yeah I know, just sucks that the only option I get is a grey version because Telstra decided now was the time to jump on the Windows bandwagon, when they never bothered to get the 900. Really they shouldn't be limiting colours to one provider, gives me that DLC feel.

I use it because it is more open; I don't like Apple's walled garden approach. But I think their devices are awesome and don't hesitate to recommend them to people.

To those (who are many) who have never actually tried a Windows phone, I urge you to go down to a Telstra store and just play around with a Lumia 800 or Omnia W.

I played with my aunt's Lumia 800 on the weekend. It was OK, but I can't see any reason why I'd recommend it over Android or iPhone. As far as I could tell it was on par with pretty much everything else, just without a well-developed app ecosystem.

i'd hardly say it's early adopting when there are already a number of devices on the market running wp7.5 which is mostly the same thing...

I'm talking about the Lumia 920 which I thought ran a new version of Windows Mobile with more bells and whistles... is that not right?

I'm talking about the Lumia 920 which I thought ran a new version of Windows Mobile with more bells and whistles... is that not right?

Reports from reviews are that its improved yeh, but I don't think consumers have access to it yet? Its certainly more than say the jump from iOS 5 to 6, but a lot less than the old win mobile to WP7.5 stuff.

Well now with the tied nature of both Windows 8 phone and OS, you'll see a heap more apps appear on the market. Heck currently on my phone the amount of apps has doubled and I can only imagine what it will be like in a few months.

Really the jump between the Lumia 900 and the Lumia 920 is quite significant. We've got new live tile system, updated kernel, windows 8 OS, better social feeds, NFC, wireless charging etc etc. Its going to be quite an interesting time now that Windows are moving into the smartphone and tablet scene.

7.8 is an upgrade to 7.5 which adds a couple of features of WP8 to legacy phones.

So, if you buy a phone with a version earlier than 8, you will never get any further than WP7.8.

I liked the look of the 920, even though I'm pretty happy with Android (Galaxy S 2) however after seeing the Nexus 4 at a price I'd actually be comfortable to pay outright, I can't see how I would need to spend double that for a windows phone that I might't even like.

Once available personal customers will be able to purchase Nokia Lumia 920 on the $60 Every Day Connect Plan with a $5 handset repayment per month (after using an included MRO Bonus) for 24 months which offers $600 worth of standard national calls and MMS plus unlimited text messaging to standard Australian numbers and 1GB of data for use in Australia. Min cost over 24 months is $1,560 ($65/mth) (2 minute standard call $2.38, excess data usage $0.10/MB).

Once available business customers will be able to purchase Nokia Lumia 920 on the $60 Business Performance Plan with a $5 handset repayment per month (after using an included MRO Bonus) for 24 months with $600 worth of standard national calls and MMS plus unlimited text messaging to standard Australian numbers and 1GB of data for use in Australia. Min cost over 24 months is $1,560 ($65/mth) (2 minute standard call $2.38, excess data usage $0.10/MB).

Interestingly they had a segment on Sunrise this morning about parental controls with phones and included WP8 as 'one of the three main options' even though nobody has one yet! Then they spent a minuted showing off how the locked-down kids play area worked. Pretty cool I have to admit and as a parent whose kids love to f*** around with my phone its going to be useful.

I liked the look of the 920, even though I'm pretty happy with Android (Galaxy S 2) however after seeing the Nexus 4 at a price I'd actually be comfortable to pay outright, I can't see how I would need to spend double that for a windows phone that I might't even like.

Yeah the Nexus 4 is looking to be an interesting phone, could definitely win some over with its extreme cheapness. It even has me umming.

But no LTE (4G) is a turnoff. My phone is a base-station for a mobile office for me. I'm gonna pay about 70-80 bucks a month anyway to get the call volume I need so the choice of phone is less about dollars and more about what it has done for me lately.

7.8 is a bridge for 7.5 phones providing some compatibility with 8 apps as well as the new WP8 home screen.

Applications written in 8.0 can be compatible with 7.8 phones or be 8.0 exclusive at the developer's choice. I'm guessing there's some new libraries and API calls etc that may only work in WP8. Unless there's a serious reason not to, most devs would surely choose to be as backwards-compatible as possible.

Tried to order the Lumia 920 through or corporate Telstra rep and even they said they don't know when the launch date is so they can put in pre-order... how f*****g hopeless is this?! Release the f*****g launch date already Nokia!.

Tried to order the Lumia 920 through or corporate Telstra rep and even they said they don't know when the launch date is so they can put in pre-order... how f*****g hopeless is this?! Release the f*****g launch date already Nokia!.

I've gotten on to Nokia's PR people so I will see if I can get something out of them. Also looking like we might get a review unit so if anyone is keen to get a loaner to test it out in return for writing a review.... maybe we can swing that.

trog, if that's something you're seriously offering, I'd love to do something like that. I'm really keen on WP8, but not ready to commit to switching. It's not like I've never written reviews before (see: CHAU, TNN) :P

And considering at the moment I'm taking a bazillion photos with my phone cos of having a new puppy and building a house, timing works.

I've gotten on to Nokia's PR people so I will see if I can get something out of them. Also looking like we might get a review unit so if anyone is keen to get a loaner to test it out in return for writing a review.... maybe we can swing that.

Awesome, please let us know what the Nokia PR people say. It's pretty annoying for them to keep dragging this out for no good reason really.

Also I would love someone on AG to review the Lumia 920. Often time we only get a review by "pro" blogger. Which sometimes sort of skip over things and you can't really ask them any questions etc. Where as on here you can !

Not sure they'll survive? Though it would make sense for MS to buy them out at that stage to get all their IP and patents.

I wouldn't say you'd be investing in Nokia, more so investing in the Windows 8 phone OS. Nokia would only control the updates and even then being the first Win8 phone it might be like the Google Nexus with unrestricted updating.

Its getting harder to choose between the Nexus 4 and the Lumia 920. I'm now leaning towards the Nexus 4 as it looks like a really solid phone, though I think I'll wait it out until I can verify if Optus will upgrade my phone for free.

Picked one up today, managed to nab one of the 2 (!) that my local store was delivered.

So far I'm quite liking WP8. The integration with social media in particular is really well done. The tiles interface works well on a mobile device, and I can see how it will really work well on Surface x86 tablets. Its just a shame its so s*** for keyboard and mouse which creates the Windows8 metro problems.

Coming from an iPhone4 background seeing the read-write phone directories in my windows explorer was a lot more welcome than it maybe should have been!

The phone itself is big and has a pleasant heft in my hand without feeling like a brick. I was concerned in reviews about the thickness compared to other phones but its within tolerance for me.

The display is really pretty and the camera phone is the best I've ever seen personally (though I haven't owned any Samsung gear). I was using it to film an office fitout this morning and was gobsmacked at how well the camera adjusted to varying light conditions and my unsteady hand.

As expected and hoped connectivity to my old 2003 SBS was painless and al lmy contacts calendars etc magically appeared. As noted in passing above what was really cool was when I set up facebook integration my contacts linked with FB and pictures, wall updates etc all appeared.

If Nokia go out then BB can't be far behind. Wonder if their OS10 will save them?

For those that have changed phones to a different OS how do you find it with regard to retention of apps that you might have had originally. Is it hard to find cross platform versions of your faves?

I've gone from a BB bold 9000, which I have loved to death, and it has coped some real abuse in that time, to a sony xperia s (running ICS)

I haven't had much of an issue changing OS, everything is pretty easy to work out, and the transition software wise has been easy, I've found a free app that covers the jobs of my old paid for apps, also, having some fun free apps is nice

performance aside, my biggest issue has been moving to a touch screen, f*** me I hate typing on it, (it isn't just an issue with the sony, but all touch phones) and my biggest grip is fine control, (like selecting a single letter in a paragraph) at times, i honestly wish i had small ninja fingers, or a mouse (or little track pad) just to make correct easier

Its a nice phone, lack of LTE will turn some people off, and others dislike android. But it is a nice phone, and nexus phones are always nice for future-proofing software updates (and how cheap it is is very nice).

Picked one up today, managed to nab one of the 2 (!) that my local store was delivered.So far I'm quite liking WP8. The integration with social media in particular is really well done. The tiles interface works well on a mobile device, and I can see how it will really work well on Surface x86 tablets. Its just a shame its so s*** for keyboard and mouse which creates the Windows8 metro problems.Coming from an iPhone4 background seeing the read-write phone directories in my windows explorer was a lot more welcome than it maybe should have been! The phone itself is big and has a pleasant heft in my hand without feeling like a brick. I was concerned in reviews about the thickness compared to other phones but its within tolerance for me. The display is really pretty and the camera phone is the best I've ever seen personally (though I haven't owned any Samsung gear). I was using it to film an office fitout this morning and was gobsmacked at how well the camera adjusted to varying light conditions and my unsteady hand.As expected and hoped connectivity to my old 2003 SBS was painless and al lmy contacts calendars etc magically appeared. As noted in passing above what was really cool was when I set up facebook integration my contacts linked with FB and pictures, wall updates etc all appeared.

F*** yeah Hoggy, that's what I wanted to hear, reviews by real geeks for geeks! I'm hitting up our Telstra Corporate rep now to get one. In the mean time I might go to Telstra shop and have a play in store.

- Nokia Drive is really quite awesome. I recommend picking up the beta and getting a car mount for free turn-by-turn navigation GPS. I haven't owned a modern Navigator but this seems to be full-featured with 3D mapping, voice directions, auto-repathing if you go off track and a speedo that alerts you if you go over the local limit. Also doesn't require a data connection once you download the ~250Mb Australia map package. Not sure about congestion updates, but still a solid free addition to the device.

- In general Nokia have a fair few good apps on the store, the photography ones are fun. There's one where you can take a group photo and it takes like 5 shots in rapid fire. You then best base photo and then it swaps in the faces you choose from the other shots. Sounds like a good way to avoid that 'this photo is good but Bob is a retard and closed his eyes'.

- There's another app that you can use to find s*** like restaurants around you in one of those HUD kind of altered reality deals. Works pretty well and integrates with maps to give you directions.

- Night camera is pretty amazing. Wish I had it for the cyclone.

- The integration with Windows is kind of cool. I played with the Windows Phone app and its good but limited in scope. The real awesome s*** is Windows Explorer's understanding of the phone - I copied some video into the ~/Videos directory and Windows cheerfully asked me if I'd like to convert the video on the fly to a best format for the phone, gave it a go and it was a little bit slower to get it to the phone but the video ran perfectly. Have only run the one file though so I can't say if it was worth the conversion, but nice to have the option built into the OS.

The bad:

- Windows8 has no wireless sharing / synch of music and media (works in Zune on Windows 7). Zune won't connect to WP8 on Windows8. Early adopters f***ed in the bum as usual. This is just an annoyance as the USB connectivity is oretty hot and there's enough storage to preload s***.

- Sadly I have to report that the phone f*****g crashed in the middle of a call this morning and literally rebooted, driving along and call ends, look at the dash for a dropout and I see the Telstra logo on it!

This better be a one off random thing because that s*** is no go. This page has some more info. A small number of devices seem to be abnormally affected, and a hardware reset often fixes it. Lots of people reporting no problems at all after a few weeks.

I used my phone pretty much non stop yesterday without so much as a hiccup so I'm hopeful this is a mild issue for me, hopefully a software issue that they can patch at worst. Hopefully its just a new device thing and they are serious enough about this WP8 push that any endemic stability problems will be promptly sorted.

This has been acknowledged as an issue with WP8 now hoggie, especially on the 920, OTA update due in December to address the issue and the battery life.

"We're continuing to investigate some reports of phones rebooting and have identified a cause with our partners," the company said in a statement. "We are working to get an over-the-air update out in December."

my phone is capable of paypass (mastercard) but i can't get that working either.. i tried at a shop i went to. When i add the cc on the phone it doesn't find any apps so i think maybe that could be it?

So at the moment I'm using Iphone4s and use itunes to purchase music and synchronise with the phone to transfer music and playlists to it etc. How does this compare with the Nokia phones / Lumia? Is it the old skool way of simply drag and drop music onto the phone? Where do you guys purchase your music from?

WP8's music management is pretty good. You can synch with iTunes, or Windows Media Player, or the Windows Phone app thing for Metro, or just old school drag and drop through the file system -- which I assume means that basically anything would work even old school s*** like Winamp?

I yoinked my music from my old iPhone to my work computer using SharePod and loaded it into the phone from there.

$696 from JB-Hifi. They don't have any other colours, they are only allowed to sell black. Telstra store said they not allowed to sell outright for another few months even to Telstra customers, have to sign up for new plan or renew existing.. What gay s***..

Anyone know where I could buy outright in any colour other than black ffs?

$696 from JB-Hifi. They don't have any other colours, they are only allowed to sell black. Telstra store said they not allowed to sell outright for another few months even to Telstra customers, have to sign up for new plan or renew existing.. What gay s***..

Anyone know where I could buy outright in any colour other than black ffs?

One thing I've found doing the switch over is getting contact data over is a b****. Oh, and get really used to putting in your bloody skydrive username and password every 5 minutes while your setting it up.

Apart from that there is some nice stuff, already NES, SMS and Gameboy emulators which work very well indeed :)

My last 4 iphones have been black, so f*****g over it. White is a bit girly for me, I only feel that way cause most girls i've noticed have white phones. red/yellow are to "poser" for me so that only leaves grey and I think it'll fit the bill nicely.

My last 4 iphones have been black, so f*****g over it. White is a bit girly for me, I only feel that way cause most girls i've noticed have white phones. red/yellow are to "poser" for me so that only leaves grey and I think it'll fit the bill nicely.

Yeah fair enough, I was going to get the Grey one as well from what I've heard colours other than black and cyan (http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/4/3456914/cyan-lumia-920-att-hands-on) will have glossy finish, which means finger print magnets and scratch magnet. And since I don't dig Cyan or gloss finish, there wasn't other choice. Not sure about Grey though but I as I haven't seen that in the flesh. I've seen the white one at Telstra's shop and it was pretttty glossy...

For reference, the 920 is 185 grams, the iPhone5 is 112 grams, the iPhone4S is 140 grams and the S3 is 133 grams. I don't personally find the 185g weight to be an issue although it has surprising heft when you pick it up and combined with the large screen gives it a bit of a brick feel. That said I have gumby hands and I think the extra weight may actually help me to keep hold of it.

So I've had it a week now, some thoughts:

- I was initially concerned about battery, but now that honeymoon usage has settled and the battery has cycled a few times its much the same as my old iPhone.- It gets almost disturbingly warm when the GPS is in use. As in kind of hot, and sucks down charge like mad. Hopefully this is a software issue.- No VPN. This was a sting when I realised but working around it. Coming in a new update apparently.- No angle brackets like > or < in the text editor. This is dumb and makes formatting QGL posts really hard, couldn't set up quoted text in the DOTA post yesterday properly.- Speaking of the editor, the forms s*** needs work unless I'm missing something. Often the submit button hides under the text box and you have to tap somewhere off-form to get the box to f*** off so you can scroll to the next field or submit. Really, really needs a 'next form field' button like iOS has.- The big whinge about WP8 I've found to be (for me) bulls***. There's enough apps on the store to do what I need to do.- Notifications are a little awkward still in WP8. Why can't I click or drag the icon on the lock screen and go straight to whatever you're telling me about?

The above is a list of s*** that annoys me, but the total experience has been great.

I sat in a neurologist's office for 2 hours yesterday with only my 920 as company and it (it, baconit (reddit reader) and youtube) kept me largely entertained. Really appreciated the larger screen in that situation, was a big improvement over the iphone last time I had to sit through the waiting room game!

Regarding the weight, I personally found I quite like the weight. Problem with phones being too light these day is that it's also very thin, which I find it very easy for it slip out of hands and soft of hard to hold up to speak (yes I do not use hands free cord nor do I listen to music with my phone).

I actually prefer the phone's back to be slightly rounded/curved and non-slip (i.e. not f*****g glossy) so it molded to the palm better and makes it a more comfortable to use.

Got mine today, so far so good. A couple of "annoying" things in some apps that I'll probably get used to (hopefully). I like how the contacts / facebook etc are merged together, very slick. The whole thing feels super snappy.

The only disappointment for me was that Amazon Kindle (not MS' fault) app is still behind other leading platforms somewhat for example, there's no dictionary (WTF?), or use volume buttons to toggle the page turn. Other than that it works great.

The screen is pretty amazing quality. The colours are vivid and very clear, love it.

Weight wise, slightly heavier than SGS2 but I quite like it. I've installed the following apps so far:

To find still more symbolsSome of the symbol keys can bring up yet more symbols. Tap and hold to see more options. For example, if you tap and hold the left parentheses key (, you'll see left angle bracket <, left brace {, and left square bracket [, too. Or tap and hold the $ key to see more options for currency symbols.

Anyway, for my 920 yesterday, after a long, drawn-out battle with Telstra.
There's a number of niggling issues I have with it, but in particular I'm finding it hard to get over the sheer size of the device.

The keyboard needs a lot of work, and so too do many of the apps.
On the plus side, it's not a f*****g iDevice which now makes me want to kill someone.

After using for a about a week these are the things that need improving in my opinion:

- Facebook app, it's not terrible but not great either. Certainly better than the one on Android (though the latest update on Android v2.0 is prettty amazing now), still fairly slow when you get to the end of the news feed and it always jumped back to the top when the news refreshes to you have to scroll down again etc... Doesn't have live tile support other than basic notifications..wtf Microsoft?. Luckily I don't use this much any way since I just use the WP8 People's hub to get my aggregated social media feeds (FB, twitter, Linkedin).

- Some background apps will really f***ed with your batteries and performance. I found one app basically made my phone useless for ages. I had a little panic and though the phone packed it in as it was so slow and the screen got really unresponsive. Reboot a few times but still the same. So I uninstalled a few new apps I did that day and found that one of the app was causing this... a bit of a worry but really not WP8's fault. But since we can't "see" (at I don't know how) how background apps are using resources on the phone like you can with task manager on Android this is a problem for debugging problem apps.

- Kindle app, needs a lot of work. No dictionary look up (WTF?) no page turn using volume key :/ I'm sure Amazon is on to it.

- Got a chance to use the Nokia Drive the other day. No issues there, super accurate and work very, very well. Just as good and accurate as Google's map / navigation but it's quicker as it has off line map. It also has other cool stuff like current speed limits on the road and the speed you're traveling etc. Also if navigating in 3D it also shows you the major landmark buildings in 3D - nice touch. Some how it also still works even I was in the Clem7 tunnel? Not sure if I was imaging it but it still shows us traveling etc..

- Camera pretty good, took a few photos from x-mas party and the anti shake thing work ok for the most part. Still a couple of blurry photos but not a bad one. I might have been using it wrong as I didn't do an auto focus thing before I took the photo (apparently?).

- Skydrive app is ok but for some reason I can't view photos I uploaded on my phone... wtf.

- Other than that the batteries etc have been great the aggregated email works well though I wish there was a way to display all unread items from all selected synced folders in one place. Currently I still have to drill into each folders to see the messages as I have Exchange rules to sort my emails for server reports etc. Not a biggie but would be nice.

- Weight, it is noticeably heavier but after a while you just get use to it. The screen is pretty amazingly readable in the direct sunlight which I thought was very well done. And the screen is pretty amazingly good quality in general anyway.

- Browser well it's IE10, which is ok. I wish I had support of Flash so I can see some embedded stuff on pages.. and a private browsing mode would be nice. I wonder if anyone will ever port a new browser on WP8 (or is it even possible?).

- WiFi this gets a bit annoying as it seems to go to sleep if the phone screen is off/lock.. wtf. This will be fix with the up coming update (along with VPN again WTF?). Also sometimes if you're out of range of the WiFi you paired with it will take time for it to realise that and to use Mobile data instead... kinda annoying.

- SMS/phone call work as they should no issues. Good clear speaker etc.

- Keyboard. Woks ok not the best one I used, I wish the Swiftkey guys would port their app to this platform (pretty please :)). Can't reconfigure keyboard layout.. which sucks.

Overall I would rate this entire experience as a positive one, really loving the smoothness and seamless integration of the Wp8 system. Live tiles are cool (if the apps written support it).

I went with the HTC 8X instead if the 920 as I wanted something smaller and don't really care about the camera. Was previously on iPhone 3g.

So far I really like it. Fits very nicely in pocket, fantastic screen, wp8 operating system is excellent and just more "FUN" than ios. Camera takes excellent day time pics but s***house night time pics.

device as a whole is super fast and smooth, no waiting for anything.

main downsides are the phone is very difficult to hold due to the thin edges, and I seem to be making a lot more mistakes while typing which aren't auto fixed compared to iPhone.

oh yeah the simple folder setup when plugging into PC is awesome, I hated iTunes.

I seem to be making a lot more mistakes while typing which aren't auto fixed compared to iPhone

I'm an ex-iPhone user, had trouble with the keyboard until I went to 2-thumbs instead of one hand entry.

Also the predictive text is amazing. Its not just predicting the word you are in the middle of typing, also the sentence (as in predicting the next word without you typing anything!). Keep an eye on the suggested words as shortcuts and you'll be amazed at how many taps you can save.

Walked into Optus store today, apparently I would have to pay my remaining $800 contract in order to upgrade to the Nokia Lumia 920. Sucks, thought they'd be able to just give me a new phone and maybe pay a bit extra but nope. Guess I'm going S3 or the Nexus 4.

Also the predictive text is amazing. Its not just predicting the word you are in the middle of typing, also the sentence (as in predicting the next word without you typing anything!). Keep an eye on the suggested words as shortcuts and you'll be amazed at how many taps you can save.

this sounds good, the predictive text on iphone was useless for me given the speed I type at.

Walked into Optus store today, apparently I would have to pay my remianing $800 contract

Problems that are irritating me:
- Sensitivity of the buttons and touch-area - it's really difficult to press the 'notifications' icon in the Facebook app
- The 3G/LTE/WiFi indication isn't always visible. This means when you drop off WiFi you don't know, so you're chewing through expensive, fast LTE bandwidth.
- It's chewing through the battery.
- Fonts are way too big in the Facebook app and all the Twitter apps I've found. So you just can't consume as much content quickly as I could on iPhone.
- There's no quick way to scroll to top in apps. On iOS it was a click near the top bar. Can't find an equivalent in WP8.
- No rotate-lock. Imagine using your iPhone lying on your side in bed, and the damn thing wants to keep spinning on you.

2015? Did you sign the 2-year contract in the future and come back to try and get out of it?Trap for new time travellers.Edit: Also Nokia Drive got its first trial by fire last week, was in Brissy on business and I don't really know my way around town well. It really sucked down the juice (the weekend update seems to help with that) but the accuracy and reliability of the thing was really solid, couldn't fault it.

Heh, 2014 my bad. Forgot we were in 2012 for a while there. Eh I'll just find a cheap S3, seems to be a good bang-for-buck phone unless Google's Nexus 4 ever comes back into stock.

Heh, you shoulda bought into the hype parabol, coulda made epic bank in 3 months!

Lol yeah I was thinking that the other day. Quite surprised they have been able to maintain a relatively high value (was expecting merely a short spike). Then again this is only relative - with this boost they are still only at about 10% of what they were 5 years ago, so long way to go.

I guess these Lumia models are Nokia's last attempt to avoid bankruptcy. I'm hoping they'll survive just to keep pressure on Apple and Samsung.

I've all but given up on the 920. Sick of the crashes, Nokia Drive Beta is in a perpetual state of "resuming", the music/podcast player is awful in managing my podcast library, the phone is constantly on *heart* battery life, the live-tiles - which i love, are for the most part never upto date, and every morning I wake up I am greeted with 10 messages about peoples birthdays who I don't give a f*** about. Oh and finding a car dock for it that isn't balls and actually plays music via RF+USB is impossible. Oh and sync'ing is pretty damn awful. Nokia Drive is also stupid, it works well when it works, but its reverse-geocaching lookup is ridiculous. Where the f*** are phone favourites, and why can I not scroll to the top of a scrollview with one tap. Also I actually want the status bar items at the top to always be there - I find it important to know if I have reception/wifi, and what my battery life is. I do like the mail app though, I will say that.

Oh, and Nokia/MS should have class action bought against them for delaying Portico on non-AT&T phones, especially for unlocked/unbranded phones (where there is no excuse of the "we are working with carriers" bulls***)

I have experienced the 920 intermittently shuts off for no explainable reason (maybe once a fortnight) which requires a soft reset, but then it's all good again.

it is annoying that the live tiles for most apps dont actually do anything "live". i don't use a lot of aps. there are a number of basic UI features that MS really just had to carry over from other OSs and yet they didn't. a big one for me is silent ring mode with no vibrate.

my single biggest annoynance is the phone directory - when i am searching for people to ring, i don't want all my facebook and twitter contacts to come up too. I will never want to ring them!!!

on the plus side the broswer is lightning fast and the camera delivers amazing shots. phone call qualitty is great as is bluetooth stability. the screen clarity and sensitivity are impressive. the email and touch screen for typing i was skeptical but it is way faster with the autocorrect and autosuggest.

So without any charging and normal use last night (email checking (exchange push), SMS, looking s*** up on the web, wi-fi left on) I unplugged at 6pm and at 9:30am I'm at 55%. I wouldn't mind a little more life but I can personally live with that (and if I get caught out the heart thing extends battery life considerably).

The favourites thing threw me, like infi when I connected facebook I ended up with a huge list of callees. You can set up a Group though and add people who are important to that which works pretty well, you can customise the group display order so your most-called are at the top. Another option is to add the person as a live tile to the phone itself.

Something else I didn't realise for a long time is that if you click on the index letter in a list (like 'a' in your contacts) it brings up a screen with a shortcut to all letters in the alphabet. So to find Derek Zoolander you can hit the 'a' button, then 'd' and you are at the d point in the list.

Is it not an option to NOT sync those from FB? When you activate FB on Android it is optional whether or not you want to sync with your contact list.

No idea, I don't remember when I set it up, but looking in settings there isn't a flag for it. You can just not add your Facebook account to WP8, the only real reason to do it is to integrate it with your People (contacts list basically although its extended in WP8 to different areas).

If you don't want to do that then you could just use the FB application?

Hmm, maybe I'll write an app this weekend that just displays your People who you have phone numbers for!? :)

Yeah after about 3 weeks of having the Lumia I don't have much instabilities either. I get 10-11 hours of usual usage before it gets to ~50% percent so that's pretty much on par with other smart phone with large screen.

The one thing I noticed that sometimes the phone get very hot browsing the net or Facebook _but_ not all the time. It's really strange sometimes I can be browsing a lot and the phone stays fairly cool but sometimes it just get quite warm and I can't really tell what's causing it. Sometimes I'd turn if off and back on to make sure whatever that was in the background didn't chew up all my batteries by not releasing the CPU usage or going to sleep mode etc.

Though using Drive always make the phone hot but usually it cool down quick as soon as you shut it off.

Other than that, the rest seems alright I'm sort of used to the WP8 idiosyncrasies now and found everything is still very smooth and easy to use. Portico update should be good to fix some of the small annoyances. Though MS really need to get their arse into gear and finish and release the notification centre. Live tiles are good but if you get lots of notifications it really suck a lot.

You can choose to not sync Facebook contacts, but it kind of makes it useless because the phone OS itself is so integrated into social networking. Also I have the Lumia 900 and have been experiencing consistent crashes, or just decides to power off when it receives messages, which makes me think it's either dying or linked in some way to a recent update.

Also does the S3 have sturdy car handset holders? Need to retire my GPS or else it will cost me $200 for new maps.

Haven't had many stability issues, and no problems with Drive (works perfectly whenever and wherever I've needed it).

I have experienced the 920 intermittently shuts off for no explainable reason (maybe once a fortnight) which requires a soft reset, but then it's all good again.

Mine is fairly intermittent at being intermittent. It was crashy as hell the first week, then good, now its gone back to crashy. Its definitely not an isolated issue, and sounds like Portico hasn't fixed it completely. I've lost track of the number of times I have pulled my phone out of my pocket to see that its locked up and when I restart it I've had 5 missed calls. Straight out unacceptable. I've now trained myself to check every 30 minutes to make sure it hasn't crashed on me.

As for drive, its more setting the location that drives me mental. I had to pickup pizza for a friend yesterday and I kept typing in "Dominos Brassall Queensland" and it was insistant on directing me to Dominos stores in the UK. I ended up googling for it, finding the specific address and copy/pasting it in. At this point (because I have disabled Drive background service for battery life) it got stuck in "resuming" state and I had to restart the phone to get it to work.

Is it not an option to NOT sync those from FB? When you activate FB on Android it is optional whether or not you want to sync with your contact list.

It is, but its the one of the main selling points of the phone in the first place. Though I do regret doing it, maybe my experience would be a bit better without it.

The favourites thing threw me, like infi when I connected facebook I ended up with a huge list of callees. You can set up a Group though and add people who are important to that which works pretty well, you can customise the group display order so your most-called are at the top. Another option is to add the person as a live tile to the phone itself.

I started doing this, way too much effort though unless you only ever ring 2 people. I really liked the idea of livetile groups, but again its kind of like Google Circles, great in theory but too much effort.

Something else I didn't realise for a long time is that if you click on the index letter in a list (like 'a' in your contacts) it brings up a screen with a shortcut to all letters in the alphabet. So to find Derek Zoolander you can hit the 'a' button, then 'd' and you are at the d point in the list.

Yes, it makes scrollviews a little easier to deal with, but it still definitely feels like a tacked on usability feature rather than part of the core UX.

App store is average, I mean there is choice there, the quality isn't as high but its getting there. But be prepared to be waiting 6 months for ports of iOS/Android apps.

Im on android so pretty much a huge nokia noob but will there be update issues with the lumia 920 like there are with all android devices minus the nexus line? Are OS updates for the 920 OTA?

So far what I have seen is that its incredibly bad, worse than Android. You have the proprietaryness of iOS with the fragmentation/update issues of Android. Theoretically WP8 should be good in this regard, but Microsoft are handling it incredibly badly IMHO.

My review:
Don't even bother with it, I have pretty much written it off at this stage. BB10 looks good, Android is getting better, iOS may have a renascence if Ive can use Photoshop. Its the palm pre of 2012 - great underlying concept/OS/hardware but came out half cooked.

So far what I have seen is that its incredibly bad, worse than Android. You have the proprietaryness of iOS with the fragmentation/update issues of Android. Theoretically WP8 should be good in this regard, but Microsoft are handling it incredibly badly IMHO.

My review:Don't even bother with it, I have pretty much written it off at this stage. BB10 looks good, Android is getting better, iOS may have a renascence if Ive can use Photoshop. Its the palm pre of 2012 - great underlying concept/OS/hardware but came out half cooked.

Background: I spent $700 buying one outright.

You must have pretty bad experience with yours sorry to hear, luckily mine's been ok. I take your points on apps quality, though it doesn't impact on me directly as I don't play games or use many other 3rd party apps. I agree the apps I use, the quality could be better as it lags behind their counter parts - for example FB apps (released be MS ironically) is pissed poor, Amazon Kindle app - again poor (doesn't even have dictionary look up WTF?).

Also agreed, OTA updates would have to be the worse of all. MS promises we'll all get the updates "direct" from MS but yet the releases are still slow for anyone outside of US and EU. The latest updates has been out for a month now and we still don't have it. I know they have to "test" it but why does it take so long? Apparently it's the carrier that holding this up - I thought WP8 was supposed to by pass carriers with updates? I'm very disappointed with this aspect the most actually.

I also agreed BB10 looks awesome at this stage. I will eat a humble pie as I am one of those "RIM is dead" nay sayers, if BB10 is a huge hit. I really liked the look of the X10 (one with QWERTY kb and touch screen) and the new OS. If it can sync with Exchange natively (as rumored) then I might even try it out.

Yeh I am still liking my phone (and it gives me no grief) but I miss global, instant iOS updates. If MS want to play with the big dogs they need to get onto that, but I guess they only really care about US/EU at the moment.

I'm about ready to throw my Lumia 900 at the wall, constantly rebooting every 15-20 minutes now. It seems like a reoccuring issue at the moment with 900 and 920 so hopefully it gets updated, but I don't think I'll last long enough with how cheap the S3 is and rumours of Nexus 4 coming back into stock soon.

I will say, the app market for Windows is atrocious. I'm not sure about Windows 8, but on Windows 7.5 it is nigh impossible to find anything relevant and I had to initially download another app to filter the shop properly which is still a pain. Currently no big browsers are on there (at least for 900) so you are stuck with either IE or some terribly annoying "metro" browser.

Updated my Lumia 900 to Windows 7.8 and I like the newer tile look and more colours to choose from which gives off the Windows 8 vibe. Though it still hasn't stopped my phone from rebooting constantly so I can't really be bothered anymore, might take it into Optus and see what they will do.

Just noticed that my camera roll photo's on sky drive are a lot smaller than on phone.For example, photo on my Lumia is 1.89MB, on sky drive it's 202KB..So if my Lumia dies in a fire, I'm stuck with resized copies of photo's?

Humm all of my photos' file size matches on my phone and skydrive. Apparently it'll only upload full res if you upload to Skydrive over wifi:

I can't choose method to upload with. I wonder why you are uploading at full res and I'm uploading at low res, what makes you so special lol.

I meant to say it'll only upload full res if you do it via Photos hub and (probably) over WiFi. If you choose to do automatic upload to Skydrive in your camera app then it'll need to be on WiFi to upload full res. I know it sucks but I can see some sense for MS for doing it otherwise if you take heaps of pictures and auto upload them all you'll be f***ed over with your data charges.

My phone is on WiFi just about all the time except for when I'm driving. It doesn't make sense, it should have an option to upload at full res only when connected to WiFi only.oh and sorry for dumb question but what is photos hub?

It's the built in app called "Photos". You know where you click to view the photos on your phones that you've taken via cameras etc? As for uploading, I think if you select to autoupload when you take the photo then it has to be on WiFi for it to upload full res - at least that's what I got from that link I sent you.

I don't auto upload photos when I take photos, I go to the Photos hub then manually upload them to Skydrive when I'm at home. So far all the photos are in full res in Skydrive.

If you're alright doing what I do and still get low res images in your skydrive then this may be something else :/

Anyone on the 920 experiencing the phone turning itself off, and not turning itself back on. Gf is having an issue where the phone turns itself off while she sleeps and it doesnt turn itself back on...which is a pretty f***ed thing if you rely on it for the alarm.

Well csirac I still get the random rebooting, but I've never experienced it turning off and then not turning back on. Sounds like a fair few issues pertaining to Windows phones in general sadly.

With the reveal of the S4, I'm now tempted to wait for that, but at the same time I don't think I could wait that long just because this phone is starting to really annoy me. So should I grab an S3 or a Nexus 4 now, or wait for the S4?

bump!Anyone on the 920 experiencing the phone turning itself off, and not turning itself back on. Gf is having an issue where the phone turns itself off while she sleeps and it doesnt turn itself back on...which is a pretty f***ed thing if you rely on it for the alarm.

Nah I haven't had those and I run stock everything. I obviously updated to Portico but that's about it. Maybe take it back and get it swap out ?

The phone's been running great for me. I could get through the day easily with it.